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Peter's Favorite Mural

I think it’s safe to say that my friend list is never permanent – I love meeting new people and including them in my friends circle. There are permanent adds and others who eventually become acquaintances. I guess it’s normal that you click more with some more than others – usually your life stage, personalities and interests align and you form more intense and permanent bonds with some more than others.

The Beatles

And now the time has come
And so my love I must go
And though I lose a friend
In the end you'll know

-The Beatles

And you also lose people – for me that includes former close friends and close family members. I have come to terms that not all relationships are meant to last but it doesn’t mean that I don’t feel a sense of loss from the place in my heart that that person once occupied. It’s a funny feeling – to feel empty by no longer having a connection with someone, combined with a ‘let it go’ attitude of not letting this crappy situation weigh on me. In some ways, I’m still hopeful that things will work out with some of these folks but I’m also realistic that my ‘lost partner’ may not want me in their life anymore, that they are okay with how things are. I guess it’s a sobering realization that I may feel a sense of emptiness by no longer having that person in my life and conversely, they may feel exactly the opposite – that I didn’t add value to their lives. Said differently, it might be true that they feel their lives are BETTER without me in it.

I like to think of myself as an adorable ray of sunshine, but the sad truth is that some people (perhaps many people) don’t like what they see in me or they may be in a place in their lives where someone like me annoys them or is threatening to them. I can’t control what other people think and I can’t force someone to like or love me, so I’ll be focusing on loving myself and my friends who do enjoy this goofy sports-loving, hug-seeking trivia man.

Peter Leahy

A self-proclaimed “ideas guy,” I’ve worked in marketing for over twenty-five years. After years of sadness, emptiness and self-loathing, I finally came out of the closet in 2013 and reinvented myself. Now happily married to my husband for over two years, we live in California with our Chihuahua Felicia, the queen of our household.

Peter Leahey - Author of Glowing Up Gay

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